DDD "Features"

From:

Allen King

Subject:

DDD "Features"

Date:

Thu, 24 Jan 2002 15:50:40 -0500

I've been using ddd now for over a year on RedHat 7.1 and
7.2, and
find it a very useful tool. There are however a number of little
anoyances which seriously detract from its usability. Perhaps
they
can find their way into a newer rev.

1. I always want the file | open_sources box to have the suffix .cpp,
and be large (30-50 lines). Ddd always opens it
with null suffix
and few lines, and I always spend time with this mundane
task.
Could ddd remember the suffix and size in its preferences?

2. Would love to make the openSources sequence take fewer
mouse-presses. Can I move a keystroke or something?
I remember
Think-C had a bunch of neat things, like a ".h" button
on each ".c"
file.

3. Often when I change the sources and recompile, ddd/gdb still uses
the old sources. The only recourse I know of is
to exit ddd and
reenter. Is there a "reread sources" functionality hidden
somewhere?

4. Ddd/gdb often gets wedged, spending 100% of the cpu cycles doing
something -- my guess is reading symbol tables.
The only recourse
I have is to kill ddd and gdb.

5. When a breakpoint is hit, the source code where the PC is often
isn't displayed. Up 0 is often required.

6. Single stepping takes significant time (like 2-4 seconds/
instruction). This is on a 400MHz machine.
This is with
checkpoints (backup) set to zero (off).

7. Would love to have real emacs/xterm editing keys in the debugging
window. It's probably in there, but I have yet to
figure out how
to do it.

GUI Interface Issues: A group of issues revolve around the GUI/ddd
interface, which seems a little "clunkey", both in terms of its laggy
performance and non-flawless interface.

8. When using the scroll bar to scroll down sources, the screen goes
mostly white, only displaying sources when the dragging
stops.
Most editors don't do this, and it makes it hard to "surf"/search
for areas of code by their visual paterns.

9. When I go to lasoo text in the command window, a) I can't use the
standard left click at the start, right at the end X metaphor,
and
b) it only scrolls the window down in a little margin
near the
bottom, and takes quite a while to get down.

10. There often is text lasooed in the cut buffer which isn't in the
origional window. Often the problem occurs if I
scroll off the
bottom of the command buffer (if I stop earlier than the
bottom,
usually okay). Sometimes it picks up the top of the cmd
buffer,
sometimes extra text is appended after the last thing
lasooed.

11. I double click in source window on "subroutineName". What
gets
highlighted (as black) in the window is "subroutineName((const",
but what gets pasted is just "subroutineName".

I hope this helps you improve ddd. Please write me
if you need any
more information.